This category examines military campaigns fought during the colonial era—where European powers projected force far beyond their borders. These studies consider imperial objectives, expeditionary logistics, indigenous resistance, and battlefield outcomes. Drawing from period sources, campaign diaries, and maps, these articles reconstruct the unique challenges of warfare in unfamiliar and often hostile terrain, from the jungles of Indochina to the African veldt.
On 15 November 1899, just south of Chieveley Station in Natal, a Boer force lured a British armoured train patrol into a well-placed ambush. On board was 24-year-old war correspondent Winston Churchill, along with about 120 British troops under Captain Aylmer Haldane. Churchill subsequently escaped from captivity and evaded Boer security forces in an extraordinary journey of some 400 kilometres.
April 2025. Ba Khe, near the village of Cát Thịnh, Yên Bái Province, Vietnam. I am exploring the old Route Coloniale 13 west of Yen Bai, retracing the ground fought over during the October 1951 battle for Nghĩa Lộ. This is steep, broken country. The road winds through narrow valleys, overlooked by sharply rising hills, with restricted movement corridors and very little room to manoeuvre once committed.
April 2025. Nà Sản, Vietnam. Our next stop was at the old fortified ‘hedgehog’ of Nà Sản, just east of Son La. The French and Viet Minh fought a massive battle here in late 1952, the outcome of which convinced the French that holding a remote airbase and using superior French firepower to defeat enemy attacks was a valid strategy. Dien Bien Phu says – “Hold my beer!”
April 2025. Tu Lê Valley, Yên Bái Province, Vietnam. I am exploring the site of Major Marcel Bigeard and 6e Bataillon Colonial de Parachutistes (6e BPC) epic stand and fighting withdrawal from Tu Lê in October 1952. In my personal collection, I have a 6e BPC paratroopers beret, so I brought it back here to this famous valley.
Across the Long Tan battlefield, there is very little apparent relief in the terrain. The ground is largely flat and agricultural, with sections planted in rubber trees at varying stages of growth or left fallow.
In the autumn of 1947, the French Far East Expeditionary Corps launched Operation LÉA, one of the most audacious operations of the Indochina War. The operation aimed to strike deep into the Việt Bắc, the mountainous sanctuary of northern Tonkin, with the explicit objective of capturing Hồ Chí Minh, dismantling the enemy’s political and military command structure, and collapsing the insurgency at its source.
A bold plan and a day of disaster on the Tugela Heights! At the Battle of Spion Kop, 23-24 January 1900, a bold British night attack seized a key Boer position overlooking the Tugela River. By dawn, the British realised they had halted short of the crest and were exposed to converging Boer fire from… Read More »⚔️🔒Battle of Spion Kop, Natal,
23-24 January 1900
The Battle of Rorke’s Drift, 22-23 January 1879, was fought in the opening phase of 1879 Anglo-Zulu War. 139 British soldiers and colonial auxiliaries successfully defended a small mission station on the Natal-Zululand border against 3,000-4,000 Zulu warriors. The battle followed immediately after the Battle of Isandlwana, in which King Cetshwayo’s Zulu Army destroyed a British force of more than 1,200 soldiers.
The Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-1880, was part of the ‘Great Game’ between Great Britain and Russia as both sought greater influence and to undermine the other in Central and South Asia. In 1878, Russia sent a diplomatic mission to the court of Sher Ali Khan, the Amir of Afghanistan. The British mission was refused entry into Afghanistan. Fearing that the Russians had gained an advantage, the British used this as justification to invade Afghanistan, ostensibly to secure India’s northwest frontier.
The Battle of Isandlwana, fought on January 22, 1879, was the first major battle of the Anglo-Zulu War and one of the worst defeats ever suffered by the British Army. A force of more than 1100 British soldiers and 400 local levies was overrun by the Zulu Impis of King Cetshwayo